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Mariners can’t close Indians out, lose it 10-8 in 10th

The Cleveland Indians leap from their dugout in celebration as a three-run homer by Yan Gomes clears the left field wall in the 10th inning to hand Seattle a 10-8 walkoff loss.

Twice, the Mariners had the Indians down to their final outs, but couldn’t close it today. Charlie Furbush gives up the three-run homer in the 10th to Yan Gomes and the Indians hand the Mariners a 10-8 loss in 10 innings.

Justin Smoak had homered to give the Mariners an 8-7 lead in the top of the inning, but then Furbush allowed a leadoff single, then saw Drew Stubbs reach base when Smoak dropped a ball at the bag. Gomes then hit his second home run of the game.

The Mariners are swept in four.

“It’s tough, not easy,’’ Smoak said. “Three walk-off (losses) is never good in a four-game series.’’

The Mariners nearly had the game put away in the ninth when Smoak made a great, diving stop to his right of a Carlos Santana grounder headed for right field.

Smoak flipped the ball to closer Tom Wilhelmsen, who dropped it and allowed the tying run to score.

“Smoakie made a great play and threw a perfect ball right to me,’’ Wilhemsen said. “I simply took my eyes off it and it fell out.’’

The Smoak homer nearly made everyody forget about that. But then the Mariners couldn’t get anybody out in the bottom of the 10th and all their efforts went for naught.

Smoak said the late loss clearly hurt in a clubhouse where many of the players seemed stunned and angry.

“But at the same time, it shows you how much fight we have as a team,’’ he said. “They get up and we battle back. They battled back and then we battled, back and forth the whole game. It was just one of those things where we know what we’re capable of doing.

“We’ve just got to keep our heads down and keep going.’’

Mariners manager Eric Wedge said he didn’t want to push Wilhelmsen into unchartered territory by having him work a second inning of relief.

“We kept coming back,’’ he said. “We kept coming back and kept taking the lead, we just weren’t able to make plays and make pitches when we needed to late.

“We were so close to winning that ballgame,’’ he added. “We’re just on the south side of things right now. We still have to look at the baseball we’ve been playing and the teams we’ve been playing – two first place clubs in New York and Cleveland. We’ve played seven games now on this road trip and easily could have won six of them, so we’re that close.

“But you’ve got to execute and you’ve got to make plays late in the ballgame to finish those types of games off.’’